Posted on 09/24/2019 8:31:35 AM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
DALLAS - The second day of testimony in the murder trial for former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger started out with audio and video evidence from the night she shot her upstairs neighbor.
Guyger is charged with murder for the death of 26-year-old Botham Jean in September of Jean last year.
She claims the shooting was accidental. She told police she went into Jean’s apartment thinking it was her own and shot him because she thought he was an intruder.
The state’s first witness Tuesday morning was the 911 call taker who received Guyger’s call. Guyger listened and occasionally wiped away tears as her 911 call was played in court.
“Oh my God, I thought it was my apartment. F***!,” she says on the call.
“I thought it was my apartment,” she repeats over and over.
Jurors also saw graphic body camera video from Officer Michael Lee. He was one of the first officers to arrive on the scene the night of the shooting.
The video shows Lee running up four flights of stairs and through hallways to find Guyger in Jean’s apartment.
“I thought it was my apartment,” Gugyer frantically repeats once the officer arrives.
In the video, Lee gives Jean CPR, trying heroic efforts to keep him alive until paramedics arrive.
“Come on, Chief!” he yells repeated.
As the trial began Monday, the state showed the jury explicit text messages and talked about Snapchats Guyger sent to her police partner Martin Rivera that night in September 2018.
She also spent 16 minutes on the phone with him on her way home. She then parked on the wrong floor at the Southside Flats and went into Jean’s apartment instead of her own.
Prosecutors also said Guyger missed several other cues that she was on the wrong floor including a bright red door mat outside Jean’s door and the smell of marijuana in his apartment.
After the shooting, Guyger called 911 and continued sending Rivera messages. One stated, “I need you.” Guyger and Rivera deleted their messages after the shooting, prosecutors said.
Guyger’s said argued what happened that night was just an unfortunate set of circumstances that led to Jean’s untimely death.
“She's thinking. ‘Oh, my God. There's an intruder in my apartment’ and she's face-to-face with him. She's within ten yards of him and he starts approaching her. And she reacts like any police officer would, who has a gun with confronting a burglary suspect,” said Robert Rogers, Gugyer’s defense attorney.
Or they liked your hell bent intent to send people to prison!
I agree with your assessment, I don’t think there was anything between these two people prior to this dreadful encounter. She was schtupping her partner, ain’t that enough?
I’m sure your right about the murder charge, but that may prove to be a mistake. I don’t think juries like seeing defendants being overcharged. I remember one (somewhat) recent acquittal because they only brought the top charge, and you know, the person just was not guilty of that crime. So they got off scot free.
She killed a man and is concerned about her job. Yeah, that's someone I want on my police force.
“””13 hours at a desk is tiring also. That’s 8am to 9pm. That’s a long day. It’s silly to pretend she wasn’t tired.”””
But Amber was not too tired to be very horny and spending a lot of time sexting with her fellow cop lover and getting mentally psyched make whoopee!!!!
Agreed.
But, she is charged with MURDER. In Texas you must have INTENT to kill. In other words, you went there with the intent to murder someone. Unless the prosecutors can show a cause OTHER THAN A MISTAKE, that Amber went to Botham Jean’s apartment, then it will be hard to prove that she entered that apartment with the INTENT to KILL Mr. Jean.
Yup. I would guess that it will be fairly easy to get some amount of "reasonable doubt" of intent in this situation. That is, unless the prosecution has turned up evidence that the resident who was killed had had previous interactions with the killer. That's really all the defendant needs, is some reasonable doubt as to intent to walk from the murder charge. Now, getting out from under the manslaughter charge? I don't think so, given the circumstances. I'm hoping that the prosecution's decision to over charge doesn't confuse the jury.
I doubt there was another way out of the apartment. That would be the smart action to take rather than firing blindly into the apartment.
I don’t think that she missed the clues at all. I also think that she went there with the intentions of killing the guy. For what I do not know. I do not believe that anything is going to happen to her.
That is what I would think also. But I do not think that either of us are policemen. I know that I am not.
The murder charge is in place because of racism and hatred for cops especially White cops. The TX Rangers first investigated the case and sent it to the Grand Jury as manslaughter. The murder charge came out of the wind.
If she is found not guilty, she’d better not live within 2000 miles of Dallas after the trial is over.
I think she will be found NOT guilty on the MURDER charge.
I think she will be found GUILTY of MANSLAUGHTER.
And I am pretty certain that the judge and jury will give her the maximum of 20 years in prison.
Without parole?
I don’t think you can give “without parole” on a manslaughter conviction in Texas.
I would have to check, but I don’t think that is an option.
Just what I thought, you can not give “without parole” for manslaughter in Texas. It is a second degree felony.
More importantly, the only “without parole” in the Texas Penal code is “Life in prison, without parole.”
I don't think Reed and Malloy did. Other than that, up for debate.
Trigger happy cop? Victim of cop culture? If you have seen as many cops getting gunned down on YouTube as I have, cop culture paranoia could be justifiable. She is guilty of being distracted or absent minded, of doing what I have done several times, getting off on the wrong floor and almost walking into my downstairs neighbor’s apartment. Her analytical faculties were overridden by her training which includes the evaluative environment existing at the Police Station. I don’t think she should do any time for this. At worst, some incipient racism might have equated black man with danger, but given her line of work and crime statistics, this is not an unreasonable take. That faction of the public calling for her head is mired in victim mentality and that equals lynch mob any day of the week.
ExTxMarine,
I hear you, but she is not charged with intending to enter someone’s house, where she had no legal right to be, she is charged with the act of intentionally drawing, aiming, firing her weapon with a clear intent to shoot someone. That seems to be the crime.
Whether the jury will agree that she was reasonably mistaken and therefore excused from the crime of murder will be the deciding factor.
Juries are usually well instructed as to the required elements of the charged crime, not with the mindset of the person charged.
Her defense falls apart if she argues that she was justified in shooting the man she mistakenly believed to be a burglar in her apartment when in fact she was not in her apartment and therefore the act of shooting was not reasonable, whether she did anything up to that point of firing without criminal intent. It is that act that she is being tried for; she drew, aimed and fired with the intent to shoot someone (or else there would be no charges or trial...) She is not saying she had a negligent discharge unholstering while putting her weapon on the counter or nightstand., that would lead to a lack of intent defense.
I will dig into TX code though, as it seems to be a bit different than what I am used to if intent is required. There has to be more to the law than that.
Texas penal code specifically says for Murder (either version) requires intent.
But has the prosecution in any way demonstrated a *motive* for her to want the man dead? If she didn’t have the intent to kill him, then it’s not murder, and I would think the prosecutors overcharged her unless they put forward some tangible evidence demonstrating that she wanted to kill him.
But it seems like in this age, criminal justice is one more area where society is slipping into darkness.
I don’t see how they could convict for murder because they will need to prove that she knew the guy before and intended to go to his apartment instead of hers and that she intended to kill him or an argument ensued and she killed him it looks more to me like she was intoxicated and went to the wrong apartment and freaked out like girls with guns are prone to do And shot and killed a poor man... that should be serious manslaughter to me and to carry jail time even for a Police person perhaps even more so
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